The Shopping Agreement: Hollywood’s New Model

By John Gilstrap

Finally! I no longer have to keep the secret: my nonfiction book, Six Minutes to Freedomhas been set up at Netflix to be a feature film with a projected release in 2026. I’ve known for at least two months now, but I had to wait for the announcement in Variety before I could go public. Jared Rosenberg will write the script and Toby Jaffe will produce. More on them later.

A romantic beginning.

Back in April, Joy and I were in Greece, celebrating her birthday with an al fresco dinner at the base of the Acropolis when my cell phone rang. Normally, a romantic dinner trumps a phone call, but not when the caller I.D. shows your Hollywood agent’s name, and there was no way he could be bringing anything but good news. With no current film projects in the pipeline, there was no conceivable bad news to deliver.

Good news indeed! One of the hottest new screenwriters in Hollywood–Jared Rosenberg, whose film Flight Risk, directed by and starring Mel Gibson and Mark Wahlberg, will be released in January, 2025–loves SixMin and wanted to sign an 18-month shopping agreement to turn it into either a feature or a long form series.

“Great news!” I said. “How much?”

“Well, nothing. It’s a shopping agreement. It gives him exclusive rights to package the property and shop it around and see if there’s interest. Maybe he’ll write a treatment, put together a production team, get actors excited.”

I was confused. “Aren’t you the person who told me that no one gets to do anything with my book without paying for the right? Pay to play?”

“That was before the writers’ strike,” he explained. “All the rules have changed. I think you should do it. This guy’s got horsepower now. He can open doors.”

I still wasn’t ready to leave the world I thought I understood. “How can he sell something he doesn’t yet own?”

“That’s the beauty of the shopping agreement,” my agent explained. With so much of the legwork already accomplished by the shopping entity, the author is in a stronger position than ever before.

Not insignificantly, let’s remember that the book came out in 2006. The opportunity cost of a potential mistake was pretty low.

“Let’s do it!”

Then Comes September . . .

. . . and word that 20th Century is very interested in doing a deal for SixMin. While I was busy not paying attention, Jared Rosenberg had joined forces with producer Toby Jaffe and together had been drumming up excitement for this great movie project. It was time for the agents to go to work.

And here’s where it got interesting because we’re all repped by different agents, each of whom is jockeying for the best deal for their client. Over the course of the next few days, we received, rejected, tweaked, countered, and tweaked again various dollar values and deal points, as I presume the other players were likewise doing. It felt to me that we were coming very close to a deal we could live with when . . .

Wait! Netflix wants to make the movie! The negotiation chess game just became three dimensional, with three agents negotiating deals with two studios, with no one knowing the details of what the others are asking for/demanding. This was the first time when I really understood the value of good representation.

Now it’s time for me to be a bit coy so as not to step on toes. When the dust finally settled, the production team was happiest with the deal they hammered out with Studio A, while the Studio B terms were far more favorable for me. I won’t say which player was A or B, but it’s rare in the movie business when the author of the source material is in able to negotiate from a position of power. The best terms for the production folks don’t mean much if they don’t own the rights to the story they want to produce.

Stuff happened behind the scenes, and now we’re set up at Netflix. Cool beans. And as far as I can tell, nobody’s feathers got singed during the back-and-forth.

It’s been a very long time since I’ve had a hand to play in Tinseltown. It feels good to be back. And for now–for this brief, shining moment in time–it looks like the movie will actually be made. (Everyone please do me a favor and knock wood now.)

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About John Gilstrap

John Gilstrap is the New York Times bestselling author of Zero Sum, Harm's Way, White Smoke, Lethal Game, Blue Fire, Stealth Attack, Crimson Phoenix, Hellfire, Total Mayhem, Scorpion Strike, Final Target, Friendly Fire, Nick of Time, Against All Enemies, End Game, Soft Targets, High Treason, Damage Control, Threat Warning, Hostage Zero, No Mercy, Nathan’s Run, At All Costs, Even Steven, Scott Free and Six Minutes to Freedom. Four of his books have been purchased or optioned for the Big Screen. In addition, John has written four screenplays for Hollywood, adapting the works of Nelson DeMille, Norman McLean and Thomas Harris. A frequent speaker at literary events, John also teaches seminars on suspense writing techniques at a wide variety of venues, from local libraries to The Smithsonian Institution. Outside of his writing life, John is a renowned safety expert with extensive knowledge of explosives, weapons systems, hazardous materials, and fire behavior. John lives in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia.

18 thoughts on “The Shopping Agreement: Hollywood’s New Model

  1. Congratulations on this important step. All the best to you and here’s hoping it gets made!

  2. Super congratulations, John. Crossing fingers, knocking on wood, finding four leaf clovers. All the best. I won’t let my Netflix subscription lapse.

  3. Congratulations. Can’t wait to watch and will read before movie. I always am interested to see what Hollywood changes or keeps.

  4. Fantastic, congrats!! Times must have changed since COVID. A friend had a short story optioned pre-COVID by a pretty well-known director, and he paid her for the rights to develop her work. Maybe that is a different thing than shopping, though. The option didn’t pan out for her, so I’m delighted your opportunity did. Good luck!

  5. John, I’ve been saying to my husband for awhile now that I wish one or more of your stories could be a movie…yay! It’s a great story, and will be a great movie.

    Maybe next, Scorpion and Big Guy can be in a 16 part series! 🙂

    Congrats, and I’ve got 25+ trees on our property I can knock on for ya…

  6. Wow, this is great news, John. Congrats!

    And your headline brings up an interesting point about the two types of Hollywood agreements: Shopping vs. Option/Purchase. In my case with New York 1609, I was approached by a relatively unknown producer with a shopping agreement. But my experienced entertainment attorney (I was/am not repped by an agent) recommended I turn it down flat and counter with a traditional Option/Purchase. His reasoning related to what you describe here about “horsepower”—he wasn’t seeing it. So when they offered me a lowball O/P agreement, he brought his experience to bear and vastly improved the deal points and the $$$. I’m currently at stage 3 of the option and waiting to see if they come through to final purchase.

    So my fingers are crossed—thumbs pressed for Germans—for you and SixMin!

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